I should be embarassed, but I'm not

I'm a weather geek. I love to watch anything to do with weather on tv. Anything. I'll do tsunamis, tornadoes, cyclones, as well as the more mundane nor'easters, hurricanes, and rain showers. I like weather, I like how weather forms, I like learning about weather and watching the Doppler radar. When a storm is forming I'm glued to the TV. I honestly am a weather geek. Which is why today I cried at the weather report.

My entire grown up life I've had one weatherman. When I moved to Colorado for college, there was this hilariously funny weatherman on TV named Dick Albert. He was a little strange, and he used expressions like "just ducky" and his hand drawn weather maps always had strange initialisms on them, like ALC (A little cooler). Dickie was a hoot and I enjoyed him so much in Colorado that when I moved to Boston I never really got into the other weather personalities. There was this guy on, Bruce Schwoegler, who drove me totally over the edge. I think Bruce has a bit of the tippler in his history and his weather delivery was never as brilliant as Dickies. And Todd Gross. I mean really. WTFWT? Nope, I was a Dickie fan all the way.

During the blizzard of 78, I can remember thinking over and over that "if only Dickie were here" we could really have a great weather report. He was missing the storm of the century and it didn't seem fair. That was a storm made for Dickie's reporting.

Soon afterwards, Dickie returned to Boston, where he was brought up, and for the past 31 years he has been MY weatherman. I don't watch the other channels, and I watch the news for Dickie. If Harvey Leonard or Pete Bouchard, JC Monohan or Mike Wankem is delivering the weather, I'll usually grump and grouch because I want my Dickie. If it's Ken Barlow or Barry Burbank, I immediately switch to WCVB, even if Dickie isn't working. I actually like JC Monahan, but she's only on ridiculous hours, like from 5 am to noon, and besides, until someone gets her a stylist that will deal with her hair (too thick for that style) and her tendency to wear petite suits with those teeny tiny jackets that make her look like she's wearing her mommy's clothes, she's not going to replace Dickie. I guess I'm going to have to give Harvey Leonard a break. But it isn't going to be easy.

Dickie retired today. After 31 years at the same job, delivering the weather in an area infamous for the total suckiness of the daily forecast, he left his job today the way he started, with a wicked sense of humor, a love of the weather, and an obvious excitement that another storm is coming our way on Saturday. Yup, a snowstorm. It's Truuuuue!

Good luck, Dickie, and I hope to see you around town.

Stumble It! JBlog Me